Dear Editor:

I read the article in your newspaper about FortisBC receiving approval to increase electricity rates, yet again, on Jan. 1.

In it, a FortisBC executive is quoted as saying that they, “are dedicated to meeting customers’ expectations for safe, reliable service at the lowest reasonable rate” and that “keeping electricity rates among the lowest in North America is important” to them.

This may be true if you are an urban customer, but it is clearly not true if you are a rural customer who uses electricity for space and water heating.

Rural customers, such as myself, are paying 14.8 cents/kWh (the current second tier rate) for virtually all of the electricity used for this purpose.

The only province in Canada that charges a higher rate than this is Nova Scotia, and after the Jan. 1 increase, Fortis’ second-tier rate will likely exceed even Nova Scotia’s high electricity rates.

This is not the first time that FortisBC has made highly misleading statements about its electricity rates.

On May 22, 2013, Mark Warren, Fortis’ Director of Customer Services, was quoted, in your newspaper, as saying, “the only way a residential customer’s bill can dramatically increase (as a result of the introduction of two-tier pricing) is by a similar increase in consumption.”

Yet, many of us rural customers had experienced increases in our bills of more than 20 per cent, while our consumption had actually fallen from the previous year’s level.

When I asked Mr. Warren to explain his statement, he responded that he didn’t consider such bill increases to be “dramatic.”

It’s not surprising that B.C. Energy Minister Bill Bennett had to write to the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC) on July 6, 2015, to find out the truth about the impacts on rural customers of the two-tier pricing system.

Not that he will be getting answers to his questions anytime soon.

Nearly six months later, BCUC and FortisBC are still discussing the appropriate “methodology.”

And, of course, the answers the Minister receives may simply consist of more half-truths.

It appears that FortisBC is only “dedicated” to saying that its residential electricity rates are low, not to actually keeping them low for all of its customers.

Nick Marty

Osoyoos, B.C.